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What are obstacles you presently recognize preventing you from being the one that you could be? Even though we did not examine what caused us to crave a certain way of life, we have already made plans of who and what we want to be. The growth and cultivation of this plan might be like a carefully tended flower garden, or things crawling from a fermenting, stinking muck pit!

That reminds me of my first spring thaw here in Wisconsin. The thawing of the ground after the winter came as a big surprise! The basement flooded, coming in from underneath and from the walls. A friend went downstairs and then came upstairs to tell me, "Come downstairs to the basement and take a look.” I replied, "No, I am not going down there because there is dragon poop down there. Just get rid of it, please!” She looked at me strangely…. I do not want to look at dragon poop, and I could see it all over her rubber boots when she came upstairs! She had it halfway up her boots and I certainly …

Our actual needs and true talents are often inappropriately tied to a mythical process by which we are going to gloriously turn out to be the unknown person we are attempting to become. It is a quest, like Lord of the Rings for a mystical attainment of transformation that we can only hope has good motivation. On the other hand, we could be harboring destructive or counter productive demands of exactly how we are going to achieve a state that may not be the most healthy strategies, isn't that so?

For some people, the only way to become the person they envision must also be done with extreme creativity. It had to have a fluid changing quality so that each time a decision solidified of who they were, it had to be something brand new. Not only was the artistic model of personal development important, but also it could not be repeated. Since they could not do anything twice, or risk violating their principles, soon they might be doing things like running up and down the street in…

It seems as though we are inundated with influences all throughout life directing, guiding, or even forcing us to be who others wish us to be. We actually are less self-driven than we might think! In subtle and manifest ways, we emulate role models, such as a teacher, or a parent in childhood. As we begin to read, we are influenced by many other role models such as Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, or Gandhi. Others might emulate rock stars, celebrity chefs, fashionistas, or even high profile criminals.

Our interest here is not to decide what are healthy or unhealthy role models, or how we “should” behave, but instead explore the dynamics of influence. In that way, we can become clearer regarding which influences we might wish to continue that relationship with and free up our mind to explore new role model influences. However, as we explore, we must be mindful, as there will be lingering disarray from unhappy modeled influences.

Specifically now, how do we become happy? It is so simple, because we become happy by making others happy. As mentioned in previous parts of this series, we could be suffering from pride of education, technology, pride of culture, and especially pride of living in the West. Our relationship with others could be already damaged because of influences preventing us from experiencing true kindness and commonality from our own side.

To make it worse, we can become infected by the poor self-image of others who believe you to be superior and themselves inferior in ways that prevent good relationships and can even flip to anger toward you. For example, in traveling to other countries, some might view you like a kind of god realm being, (not in France, by the way).

We become happy ourselves by making others happy. We have found a common denominator applicable to all places and times when we focus on this need. "Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life o…

Rinpoche is a reincarnate Lama of the Geluk tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. The Domo Geshe lineage includes Je Pabongka Rinpoche, Kyabje Trijang Rinpoche and the great Geshe Jampa Chombe. Rinpoche has been teaching for a number of years, and holds numerous retreats and spiritual trainings each year. The current Western incarnation of Domo Geshe Rinpoche arrived through rare and powerful tantric methods in order to transmit the authentic Dharma in the Western cultural context. This incarnation of Rinpoche is considered unusual in that she arose as an adult, a Westerner, and a woman.
Rinpoche is Founder and spiritual director of White Conch Dharma Center, with branches in USA and Germany. She also founded Grand Transitions Institute and Hospice. She is author of Mystery of Emptiness & Love and Red Lotus, Buddhist Wisdom. She travels much of the year to teach, and otherwise resides at her Hermitage in central Wisconsin where personal and group retreats are given.